Class Changes 2 - Three Simple Shaman Changes for Overall Class Health and Archetype Support

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Orcandpals
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Class Changes 2 - Three Simple Shaman Changes for Overall Class Health and Archetype Support

Post by Orcandpals » Tue Oct 29, 2024 6:49 am

Howdy team. Loving the shaman changes for CC2 so far. I think they go a long way in making Shaman a class that has a solid identity that goes beyond spamming Chain Heal and dropping Windfury for the melee. However there are three major pain points within the current rework which drastically limit the viability of certain Shaman playstyles.

Those three changes being the update to elemental devastation, flame tongue weapon, and wind fury weapon. While I agree with the intent of all of these changes as they were put in place to directly counter degenerate playstyles in both PvE and PvP, I feel in their current form these changes have made these abilities completely untenable and completely erased the archetypes they supported. I think with just three small changes all of the issues with these changes could be completely fixed and shamans could be one of the most fully realized, well developed classes in the game.

The three changes that I would suggest is

Add spell power scaling back to Flametongue Weapon (Imbue only) –
While I understand why this was removed from flametongue totem, due to enabling degenerate gameplay when combined with certain other classes (ie Paladin) and the update to the totem to apply an aura instead of a weapon enhancement, these factors do not apply in any way to the personal Shaman imbue. Flametongue weapon scaling with spellpower is a necessary keystone of the “spellhance” enhancement archetype which allows shamans to forgoe some of their physical damage to deal a hybrid physical/fire damage split, supported by better AOE through their totems. Oddly the buff to flametongue weapon in the elemental weapons talent directly seems to align to this playstyle (supporting totem and fire spell damage) but the core foundation of the build that makes it all work has been removed. Restoring spell power scaling specifically to the weapon imbue restores this playstyle and makes Flametongue weapon an imbue actually worth using in some capacity.

Replace the Windfury Elemental Weapon Talent buff with “While your weapon is imbued with Windfury you gain 10% melee attack speed” –
Windfury weapon has currently been hit hard (again for understandable reasons). With the removal of the extra attack power from the bonus attacks AND the addition of a massive internal cooldown, Windfury weapon is quite literally not worth using. Similary to flametongue weapon above it is MORE dps for shamans to leave their weapon unimbued and instead use a weapon sharpening stone and benefit from the totem based windfury and flametongue buff. This is a problem. On top of that the current windfury effect on the elemental weapons talent is insulting in how small an impact it has. I understand not wanting to shove all the power of windfury in to the proc both for pvp and class feel reasons and this is why I instead suggest a talented flat 10 percent melee attack speed buff for shamans that are using the windfury weapon imbue. While I know this seems like a large buff, the fact that shamans seem to have received a stealth 15 percent haste nerf in their flurry talent (which can easily be kept at a 100 percent uptime with crit from moderate gear levels) means that overall levels of haste for Shamans would likely stay the same. This moves some power from the generic shaman toolkit and specifically ties it to their physical dps enchant, allows Windfury weapon to be a powerful weapon imbue for shamans to use, maintains the current nerfs to it’s unhealthy burst potential in PvP, and spreads the benefit of the imbue to the shaman as a whole instead of just their ability to fish for windfury procs.

Change Electrify to gain an electricity stack any time you deal nature damage –
This is another change I agree with in spirit. Shamans walking up and bursting you down with a guaranteed 200% damage guaranteed crit out of nowhere is a feels bad moment. However, the fact of the matter is that elemental shamans are a class that is highly reliant on their burst potential to pose a meaningful threat in PvP. Elemental shamans simply do not have the movement and disengage tools available to them to free cast lightning bolts on people to build up to a core pillar of their PvP toolset. If a shaman plants their feet to try to cast lightning bolts on people, they NEED to have the threat of a big crit to force people to respect their zoning or they will get collapsed on and die. The current form of electrify incentives the less effectual but similarly degenerate play pattern in both PvP and PvE of casting rank 1 lightning bolt strictly to build electricity stacks. Changing Electrify to proc whenever the shaman deals nature damage allows them to build charges with Earthshock, lightning shield orbs, and Lightning Strike. Of note, the only proactive ranged option among these is tied to shamans ONLY interrupt, one of their most important PvP tools. Changing electrify to proc on all instances of nature damage both allows shamans in PvE situations to quickly proc electrify to max stacks with a single cast of chain lightning, and in PvP allows them to play as the “mid-range” caster archetype that they are, slowly building up stacks of electrify with opportunistic earth shocks or uses of lightning strike/reflected lightning shield damage before popping elemental mastery to blow someone up. As with the above two changes this small update to electrify MAINTAINS the mitigation of the degenerate “out of nowhere” crits while allowing the archetype to keep some base effectiveness.

With these three simple changes I believe the final lingering pain points that enhancement is currently suffering from (which drastically undermine three entire archetypes, those being spellhance aoe dps, enhance single target dps, and elemental pvp) will be addressed AND we can maintain the existing improvements to the overall health of the class and elimination of degenerate playstyles.

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Cukorbaro
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Re: Class Changes 2 - Three Simple Shaman Changes for Overall Class Health and Archetype Support

Post by Cukorbaro » Tue Oct 29, 2024 9:20 am

I strongly agree with all three of your suggestions. These basically define a shaman's style and use.

It was also mentioned on another forum that Shaman-specific racial abilities need to be reviewed.
I found the new Tauren Shaman racial Totemic Slam to be a like a copied Thunder clap. It might be practical, but it's pretty boring.

I personally really like this idea:
Galendor wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 7:31 am I'd say that it's strange most of racial shaman abilities are WC3 inspired but this one is different. If devs wanted to change Spirit Link to something with same WC3-flavor, how about Ethereal Form that shifts the Shaman to another plane, taking X % less damage for N sec?
The Troll Hex spell should also be fixed as a curse and the Orcs' Feral Spirit / Spirit Wolves damage should also be checked, or modified in such a way that their use makes sense, or give ability to heal the caster shaman or something. (like: wolves heals themselves and their master for 50% of damage dealt)

Also, I would like the Tank Shaman option to be a legit raid Tank option, I would like to see some more attention to this.

I personally suegested this before:
Cukorbaro wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2024 7:42 pm Overall for Shaman tank look good, some remark:

It seems Shaman tanks has a hard time to get crit immune. Also amount of block damage is only good when you fighting multiple mobs.
Stoneskin totems still not look like ideal for raid environment, because the boss hitting so hard that the amount of reduce of your stoneskin totems is weak. (it's also not a percentage, it's flat value, maybe change this)

Shaman tanks still need is Block Chance and increased Defense or some emergency tanking ability.

I suggest to give 3 points talent to increase defense (7/14/20) in row 4 in Enhance (or more deep, because why not?), like paladin/warrior "Anticipation".

For tanking prospective I am not sure about the new tauren racial Totemic slam. It should be great if it's work on boss and working as an emergency tanking ability. At least it would give someone some benefit to be with tauren. :/

Ork's Feral Spirit / Spirit Wolves looks terrible. Generates no threat and looks weak in damage. :(
I don't think that the developers, with their efforts so far, would be able to continue the previous unfinished meme tank status. Especially since paladin has become usable compared to the vanilla version.

3drd
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Re: Class Changes 2 - Three Simple Shaman Changes for Overall Class Health and Archetype Support

Post by 3drd » Tue Oct 29, 2024 7:35 pm

Regarding the Elemental Weapons change suggestion: it doesn't make sense to add more attack speed after the Windfury Weapon internal cooldown addition. It's the same problem with Flurry and Bloodthirst. It will now be disconnected from Windfury Weapon.

While Windfury Weapon nerf is deserved because it's too overpowered in its current form, it would be better to nerf its damage than its proc rate so Flurry and Bloodthirst keep adding to it.

My suggestion would be to make Windfury give 1 bonus attack and without any bonus attack power, and have no or minimal (like 1.5s) internal cooldown. Then make Elemental Weapons increase its power slightly. That way the talents are better connected. Otherwise, Shamans will be too reliant on using strength/AP gear + slow weapons with Stormstrike and Lightning Strike to deal damage, which creates a huge mana issue and changes the play style / identity significantly.

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